Author Rachel Beanland discusses The Half Life on Book Gang—a juicy Italian-set novel exploring early marriage and finding oneself in the 1970s.
Author Rachel Beanland discusses The Half Life on Book Gang—a juicy Italian-set novel exploring early marriage and finding oneself in the 1970s.
I’m thrilled to welcome Rachel Beanland to Book Gang for an intimate conversation about her newest novel, The Half Life. Rachel brings her trademark honesty and warmth as she shares the personal stories and creative risks behind this lush Mediterranean tale. Together, we dive into her childhood memories, the challenges of writing from a single perspective, and the complex blend of history and self-discovery that makes this novel so unforgettable.
The Half Life follows Eileen, a young newlywed, who moves to the remote Italian island of La Maddalena in the 1970s after marrying a Navy officer. As Eileen adjusts to the insular world of military life abroad, she finds herself navigating cultural divides, the expectations of marriage, and an unexpected awakening. Against the lush Italian landscape and under the shadow of Cold War politics, Eileen’s journey becomes one of self-discovery and new identity in a place where the past and present collide.
In this week’s absorbing episode, we discuss:
📚 Writing from Personal History: Rachel shares how returning to La Maddalena, Italy, where she lived as a child, inspired the setting and emotional core of The Half Life. Her visit brought up powerful feelings, especially as she witnessed the American military presence and reflected on memories of her father.
📚 Point of View & Character Voice: For the first time, Rachel wrote a novel entirely from a single, first-person perspective. She discusses the unique challenges and rewards of embodying Eileen’s voice—a young woman navigating grief and self-discovery—and how her background influenced her approach to creating authentic, intimate narration.
📚 American Exceptionalism & Environmental Reckoning: Rachel and Amy dive into how The Half Life confronts the myth of American exceptionalism through the eyes of Eileen, a young military wife navigating the realities of living abroad. They discuss the hidden environmental costs of Cold War military bases, the erasure of American presence from the Sardinian landscape, and how these forces shape Eileen’s awakening to her own agency and the complex legacy she inherits.
BONUS BOOK LIST: Take 10 Unexpected Italian Escapes in your book stack this month. You can browse this list for free. Patrons receive a printable version and a bonus spoiler chat with Rachel as a thank you. us behind the paywall for a printable book list and a bonus spoiler episode with Rachel Beanland!
Meet Rachel Beanland
Rachel Beanland is the author of the novels, The House Is On Fire, Florence Adler Swims Forever, and The Half Life. Beanland attended the University of South Carolina and earned her MFA in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has taught at the College of William & Mary, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the University of Richmond. Beanland lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her family. The Half Life is available on store shelves now.
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2026 MomAdvice Book Club Books (All 12 Selections)
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
The Half Life by Rachel Beanland
Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland
Husbands & Lovers by Beatriz Williams
The House is on Fire by Rachel Beanland
Christina Baker Kline - The Foursome podcast
A Crash Course in Gothic Fiction with Erin Crosby Eckstine
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Book Gang Podcast Transcript:
Rachel Beanland (00:01)
Hi, I'm Rachel Beanland and I'm the author of The Half Life.
Amy’s Warm Intro:
Hey, Book Gang! I am so excited to welcome Rachel Beanland to our book stack this week—a gifted storyteller whose immersive historical fiction always delivers both heart and depth. Her latest novel, The Half Life, is no exception, transporting us to the sun-drenched shores of La Maddalena, Italy for an unforgettable story.
This novel was an oddly satisfying combination of a steamy beach read and a densely historical story that brings a little-known chapter of the 1970s to life. La Maddalena, now a major tourist destination, once allowed the U.S. to moor a submarine tender there when the United States and Italy signed a secret accord during the Cold War. Beanland draws from her father's experience as a supply officer stationed there, lending authenticity and rich detail to this story’s unique setting.
The novel centers on Eileen, who is reeling from her brother Lenny’s tragic death in the Vietnam War. While her professors dissect literary tragedies, Eileen remains haunted by the real-world loss of thirty thousand young soldiers—a grief that overshadows her and brings her back home to her parents.
Meeting Paul, a naval officer who reveals that he is only weeks away from a two-year deployment in Italy, is not at all where Eileen thought her life would lead after the crushing loss of her brother. Yet Paul’s magnetic blend of boyish charm, easy laughter, and the intoxicating thrill of hooking up in the back of his Chevelle quickly draws her in.
Although Eileen doesn’t fully grasp the nature of Paul’s classified work, the urgency of their romance sweeps them toward marriage. Soon, she finds herself uprooted, traveling across the world to the sun-drenched Mediterranean island of La Maddalena. There, Paul spends long hours aboard a nuclear submarine, shrouded in secrecy, while Eileen is left to carve out a life of her own. She faces the daily challenges of making dinner on a temperamental hot plate in their cramped hotel room, searching for a permanent apartment, and striving to meet her husband’s often unspoken expectations—both as a partner and as a newly minted military wife.
Upon arriving, Eileen is confronted by a tide of local resistance: banners and protests warn of nuclear waste, echoing the antiwar sentiments she’s tried to leave behind. As Italian activists and scientists sound the alarm about possible contamination in the island’s waters, investigations mount, and Eileen finds herself caught in the crossfire pulling in a confidant who threatens the precarious world she’s built.
Eileen recounts the darkest and brightest days there, over 161 short chapters. Filled with a robust cast of navy wives who step into the margins, you will be off on side-plot dramas that mount to bring this story altogether.
I pored over the nearly 500 pages in just two days and appreciated these meatier topics that Beanland brought to light, including Eileen’s sexual awakening, her inquisitiveness to understand the discourse behind their presence, and perhaps most surprisingly of all, an incredible examination of the high cost of American exceptionalism in an era where I had not contemplated our role before.
If you’re new here, hi! I’m Amy Allen Clark, the voice behind the Book Gang podcast. This show celebrates debuts, backlist favorites, and under-the-radar book gems. As I continue my deep dive into this year’s summer reading guide, I’m thrilled to spotlight another favorite of the summer.
To celebrate Rachel’s book this week, I have a brand-new (and totally free!) book list to explore on Patreon with“10 Unexpected Italian Escapes.” It’s curated to help you travel by page this summer—browse it now and discover your next Italian adventure. Patrons will receive a printable copy of today’s list and a bonus spoiler chat with Rachel.
If you can believe this is our final guest in our summer series. It has been both a joy and a fun marathon to execute this season. We will be moving promptly into fall fun with another announcement soon of fifteen new voices that we will be bringing to the show.
The Summer Reading Guide is still available for purchase, featuring a handpicked collection of 70 titles—upcoming releases, buzzy debuts, and new-to-me backlist treasures—spread across 57 pages to help you build your perfect summer stack. It’s an instant download for $7, and every purchase helps keep the lights on at Book Gang. Now is the perfect time to grab it because most of the books featured are finally on the library shelves.
Before we dive in, I have some important community updates. Classics Club will be on pause until September so I can spend time with my mom, who is currently under hospice care. Your prayers and good thoughts are so appreciated during this time.
I also want to say thank you so much to Eve Chung, who joined us last weekend for a powerful book club discussion of Daughters of Shandong. If you missed it, patrons can watch the replay, and I can’t wait for our next gathering! Speaking of which, I’m thrilled to announce our next book club pick: The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. If you have been hiding under a rock (haha!) The Correspondent is a moving novel about Sybil Van Antwerp, a woman who has made sense of her life through a lifetime of letter-writing—to loved ones, literary icons, and even to someone she never intended to reach.
As Sybil faces letters from her past, she’s compelled to confront old wounds and the need for forgiveness. Brimming with the wisdom of age and the mistakes and kindnesses of a full life, this story beautifully celebrates the solace we find in literature and in one another.
A quick note for this month's chat: Virginia Evans will not be participating in our book club chat. I did reach out, but between her jam-packed schedule and my own personal crisis, we weren’t able to coordinate an interview or live appearance this month. We’ll focus on immersing ourselves in the story together, and Top Secret File subscribers have received a fun printable to embark on a literary adventure through the books in The Correspondent which was so fun to gather descriptions for and has, honestly, inspired my reading life! Mark your calendars for August 27th at 8 PM ET. Patrons can attend the live chat and unlock the August issue of Fully Booked—27 pages bursting with eight new book reviews, adaptation news, and a jumbo list of new releases hitting shelves this month.
Now, let’s meet today’s guest: Rachel Beanland is the author of the novels, The House Is On Fire, Florence Adler Swims Forever, and The Half Life. Beanland attended the University of South Carolina and earned her MFA in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has taught at the College of William & Mary, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the University of Richmond. Beanland lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her family. The Half Life is available on store shelves now.
If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving a review on iTunes—it’s a quick, free way to show your support. And to our patrons: Thank you for making this the best summer season we have ever had! I could not do it with yout you. Thank you for supporting human creators in a world turned upside down by AI.
Now, let’s get chatting!
Amy Clark (00:05)
Rachel, it's so exciting to finally have you here on Book Gang. I remember picking up your debut and we were supposed to have a reading retreat, the pandemic happened, but I had picked your debut as the book that we were going to talk about. So I'm so thrilled that we get to celebrate this third book that you have come out with. Thank you so much for joining me.
Rachel Beanland (00:28)
Wow, well, thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here. And also, that's really funny. feel like Florence Adler Swims Forever had a lot of missed opportunities coming out in July 2020.
Amy Clark (00:39)
It really did. I remember picking that book and being like, this is the book, this is going to be it. And then we had to cancel the retreat. And so it has been on my bucket list to reconnect with you. And after I read this story, I'm like blown away by this book. I want to start out with though, I know that you were an army brat and you moved from base to base.
Rachel Beanland (00:58)
Navy actually. Yeah, Navy brat. My husband was an Army brat, so we have a lot of different branches of the military represented in our family, but yeah, I was a Navy brat.
Amy Clark (01:10)
Okay, tell me where was your favorite place that your family was stationed?
Rachel Beanland (01:15)
I mean, probably La Maddalena, Italy. We were in La Maddalena for two years between ‘86 and ‘88. I mean, I was young. I was age five when we moved there and seven when we left. My memories aren't as strong as like, for instance, when I was a teenager, we lived just outside of London for three years. And I mean, that was pretty special because, of course, I had a lot more freedom. I was a teenager. could come and go on the tube and go to museums and plays and would go out and down to Chinatown and eat out with my friends. It was just a lot of fun and a lot of freedom to have as it got in some cases, I guess I was in middle school. But yeah, the Navy, mean, one of the nice things about the Navy as opposed to some branches of the service is that our bases are all in really nice places because they're usually on the water.
Amy Clark (02:07)
Yeah, that is a perk. Well, I want to get into the story. I loved this book so very much. I don't know what I thought I was going to be reading when I first started it. Your cover is really intriguing and I feel like we're gonna get a little bit of a getaway. But this is very much like a steamy beach read and also a historical fiction pick and it surprised me in all the best ways. In some ways it reminded me of Husbands and Lovers by Beatrice Williams where I'm going into one thing and then discovering, remembering that it's got this really great steamy component. I would love to hear about the spark of idea for this story.
Rachel Beanland (02:49)
Yeah. So like I said, I lived in La Maddalena from 86 to 88. And then I did not go back to La Maddalena until 2019. When my husband is a, he's a mathematician and so he was teaching a summer class in Italy and the family we'd all gone over. God, we were in Rome for about five weeks, I think.
And at the very end of the experience, I said, I want to take you to where I lived. You know, I have all these great memories of being on this tiny island. La Maddalena is an island that is located off the northern coast of Sardinia. So it's really tricky to get there, even when you're already in Rome. You've got to fly to Sardinia and then you've got to rent a car and then you've got to drive to Palau and then you've got to take a ferry to La Maddalena. Like it is a multi-step process. So I had to convince my husband that this was a good use of time and funds. But of course, you know, I pull up a couple of pictures of La Maddalena and it looks like a tropical paradise. And he's like, okay, I'm in. We went and at this point in 2019, was the summer of 2019, I had sold Florence Adler, but it had not been published yet.
And I was thinking about what I was writing next and starting to kind of go down that road. But when we were in La Maddalena for those five or six days, it was a really moving experience for me on a number of levels. I mean, for one thing, I was watching my kids run around the same place where I had spent this time. I was also kind of re-immersed in the Italian language and culture that I had known.
My father had died a number of years earlier. And so here I was like back in a place that I remembered being with him. I think the most significant piece though of the trip for me was kind of wandering around the island, looking for the evidence of the American presence, you know, that had been there and not seeing it, right? Like there were a lot of components of the American installation there that had either been redeveloped or in some cases bulldozed or in some cases, these buildings and structures were literally kind of returning to the earth. Like my old elementary school, which was located in this area of Vistamari, kind of overlooking the Straits of Bonifacio, had just, you know, when the Americans left in 2008, they locked the door and they walked away. Nothing's happened with it, right? So it's kind of returned to the earth. It looks almost like a zombie apocalypse or something.
And so I really started to have this feeling as I was walking around my old playground thinking that like this was, I was a part of something. This was this time and place like where there was this American community on this island that is just no more. And also there are kind of a limited number of people in the world that remember this time and it was a period of about 35 years that the Americans were there. And I just thought, God, I gotta do something with that. So that was where it began. But then I wrote The House is on Fire. But I always kind of in the back of my head was thinking, I gotta do something with La Maddalena
Amy Clark (06:02)
So how long did it take you then to write this book?
Rachel Beanland (06:14)
I started it, I guess, probably the spring before The House is on Fire came out. So yeah, I mean, was working, so that was early ‘23. And I was writing it right up until, right up until my editor like grabbed it out of my hands and said, no, no, this is going to publication. I always have a hard time letting go of these books. So.
Amy Clark (06:37)
Yeah, yeah. Did you have, already have a book deal with this or was this something that you do like one book at a time for a book deal?
Rachel Beanland (06:46)
I had sold this one in advance and so I sold it based on 75 pages and took it to my editor. I've been really lucky. I've had the same editor at Simon & Schuster since Lauren Sadler, Karina Gutterman. And so we had done the same thing with The House is on Fire and I knew I had a good working relationship with her and I really love having her feedback early. So I, yeah, I went to her, with The Half Life and right away, you know, she was hooked. because I was worried like, is everyone gonna care about this military community and like, what was going on in the seventies and like I cared, but she immediately saw the story as well. And so it's been a fun collaboration.
Amy Clark (07:33)
I love that. You know, when you think about your career and all the books that you've done so far, do you think you could have wrote The Half Life earlier? Do you feel like you got confidence to write it now?
Rachel Beanland (07:46)
You know, I definitely think I'm improving with every book. I mean, I have a better sense of maybe story and I'm a little more confident in my plotting and just at the sentence level, I think I have a better sense of like when to go deep with something and then when to pull back and say, okay, this is enough. so I'm definitely getting to be more proficient with every book I write.
But I also think that every book is like starting over. And in this case, The Half Life was certainly in many ways I was doing stuff for the first time. It was the first time I'd written first person. It was the first time I had used only one character, like point of view wise. Florence Adler Swims Forever is seven points of view. The House is on Fire was four points of view. And so The Half Life we're just following Eileen O’Malley as she marries Paul Archer and moves to this island. So that was something new for me as well. So I guess the answer is yes and no.
Amy Clark (08:56)
Yeah, yeah, I'm wondering, do you feel like doing first person point of view, that stretch you a lot then? Because you are used to having those shifting, you know, viewpoints in a story. What, in what ways did that challenge you, I guess, as a writer?
Rachel Beanland (09:12)
Yeah, you know, it's funny because I teach creative writing a good bit and we often talk about debut authors as writing first person. Like it's very common, it's very common for YA books to be written in first person. I think you get a lot of students in MFA programs that are writing first person. It's, you know, first person is like the closest to writing in your diary. And so I think for a lot of people, that's where they begin their writing journey and then it kind of takes them a little while to make the leap into third person.
For me, it was the opposite. I wrote two books in third person. Third person felt really comfortable for me. I don't know if that's maybe because I have a more journalistic PR background that I liked that.
Yeah, so I think the challenge with first person is that your prose can't be that elevated because it's gotta match the person you're writing about. And so in my case, I'm writing the point of view of a 23 year old woman who has dropped out of college and is deep in grief and is not kind of outwardly educated. I mean, she's a reader, but I needed her to sound like a 23 year old girl who had grown up in Charleston, South Carolina who was moving her ass to Italy. Didn't know what was next. And so that does mean though that you can't write the most poetic sentence you wanna write. So there were times in the beginning where I wanted to throw pages across the room because I just thought like, ugh, first person.
The problem is the first person I got to the point where I just kind of like leaned into her voice and I liked being with her and I just kind of trusted that my readers would like it too.
Amy Clark (11:08)
Yeah, it's so fascinating to me because I do feel like our show primarily focuses on debuts. So that is definitely something that I see with the debut writers, especially lots of aspects of auto fiction. So it makes sense that it would feel the most comfortable to them and contemplating how you have to grow into that voice is always so fascinating to me as well, because you can tell when a writer doesn't like her characters, but you had to grow into loving your character and I love hearing that.
Rachel Beanland (11:41)
Yeah, mean, Eileen is not a perfect person. Like she's a flawed person, you know, like just like all of us. But I felt like, you know, I, yeah, I got to know her pretty well.
Amy Clark (11:51)
Yeah, well you know you have started this career, you know what you said, the first book being published around the pandemic and there have been many years that you've now been publishing. You know if you have any advice for writers who are currently trying to break into historical fiction, I would love to hear what you think has helped you sustain a career in this field.
Rachel Beanland (12:14)
God, I don't know. I think it's, first of all, I'm like patting myself on the back that anyone thinks that my career has been long enough that I could talk about trends.
Amy Clark (12:15)
Yeah, you can, you can talk, talk to us, tell us what have you seen? I mean, truly though, but you do have to think about like with the pandemic and stuff, I do think that this has been radically changing. You know, if there were other times, like let's say early 2000s, you weren't seeing the radical changes that are happening, whether that is Book Tok or the ways that readers are interacting with writers in different ways, you have been witness to huge changes happening in publishing.
Rachel Beanland (12:52)
Yeah, well, thank you, I guess. For me, I think, yes, I have been witness to some changes. I mean, there's certainly, there's a lot of responsibilities that come kind of outside of writing a book and we could talk about those for an entire hour. I think there's starting to be some kind of recognition that maybe an author can't do it all and that we do want our authors to be primarily focused on writing books. That's been kind of nice to see, I think. I feel like historical fiction in general, and I have kind of mixed feelings about even calling myself a historical fiction writer. I mean, yes, I've written three books that are set in the past, but I very much kind of think that every time I write a book, I'm just trying to figure out what the best story to write is. And so far they've all needed to be set in a particular time period. But that's not to say that, you know, I'll keep doing that. But I do think historical fiction's got like a challenge in that, you know, stuff gets popular, people get really into a particular era. I feel like we all read a lot of World War II fiction for a while.
And then, you know, trends change, people are interested in different things. I think to the extent that writers can follow their own interests and not just maybe what the market is demanding, you're better off. Because I think at a certain point if a writer went after a story thinking, oh this is World War II fiction, I know it'll sell, right? Then that would be the wrong move because we've got enough, right?
I think at the end of the day, I have a post-it note on my bulletin board that just says “It all comes back to the work”. And I try to remind myself of that every day. That you, I can't really worry too much about what's going on in the world of marketing and publicity and book sales and AI and all the rest of it. Like there's so many conversations that are happening. And if I do kind of start to weigh in, I get so lost in it all that it takes away from the writing. So I'm trying these days to kind of remind myself that the best thing I can do is write books and, you know, I get a lot of my feelings and frustrations out in those. So that's kind of where I am.
Amy Clark (15:12)
It's funny because this is just a personal observation. I've never had a historical fiction writer say, I love writing historical fiction, or I identify as a historical fiction writer. It's often reluctantly going into their career that they somehow landed in that because they wrote a story in the past. And I rarely see people really latching onto that genre. Do you know why?
Rachel Beanland (15:36)
Well, I think it's kind of just a marketing term. And that's, I think that's what kind of frustrates us. I mean, I don't want to speak for all writers who write stories set in the past, but it's, it's a way of just kind of subdividing a genre called literary fiction, right? And, or I guess maybe subdividing commercial fiction or whatever, right? I, I do kind of, I'm careful with it because I also think that women get called historical fiction writers more than men. I think that there are certain male writers who can write novels set in the past and they just get congratulated on writing really great literary fiction. And so that's something I think about.
Amy Clark (16:20)
I love talking about it because I had met with Christina Baker Kline and she said that Erin Crosby Eckstine, her debut was historical fiction and she was like, I didn't think I was a historical fiction writer. And it's just really funny as someone who's witnessing people not really gravitating towards that term as a genre. So I just thought I would ask because you're like, maybe, I don't know, maybe the fifth person that I've had sit here that has told me that they don't really identify with that genre.
Rachel Beanland (16:48)
Yeah, I mean, and also, well, it feels like it's boxing you in sometimes because, you know, I think like, for instance, what I'm working on next, I think is, I think I don't want to get ahead of myself, but it is set in contemporary times. And I don't want a bunch of readers to be disappointed that like, oh my god, she's not writing historical fiction. I can't read that. It's like, you know, I don't know, like, I guess I'd like for all of us to not be so narrow in our reading tastes or, you know, whatever that we, that we think, we only like this thing. I like great fiction that's well written and that tells a compelling story. And so I'm hoping everyone else does too.
Amy Clark (17:27)
Yes, I love it. Well, I want to get into Eileen's journey. Obviously, the book starts with her brother, and he has passed away and had served in the Việtnam War. And I loved the contrast of us contemplating grief around this time, because she's thrown into a literary course where the academic discussions of tragedy are not resonating with her because she's living a real life tragedy that she's gone through. Can we talk a little bit about how you wanted to explore basically the disconnection between what is happening in the world and then talking about tragedy in a literary class?
Rachel Beanland (18:11)
Yeah, I mean, I think I knew that I wanted Eileen to have already, I wanted her to have encountered the military before she shows up in La Maddalena. Obviously she has this early, quick marriage. And the next thing we know, she's like whisked off to the Sardinian Island and has to get to know not just the Italian culture, but also the military culture, right? The Navy culture.
But I didn't want that to be her first introduction to the military. And I think that, you know, for anyone who was growing up in the seventies, you know, and really she was growing up in the sixties too, right?
Việt Nam was a huge part of these people's upbringings. It was a huge part of my dad's upbringing. For so many people, my mother, everyone kind of knows, it's like my dad could always tell me what his draft number was, or these things that were so much a part of the culture. And so I wanted her in some ways to be struggling with the idea of patriotism and heroism and what it looks like to be an American patriot, because she's got this brother who has died in Việt Nam one hand, she's got a real template for what that looks like, what heroism looks like.
But that loss, there are a lot of aspects of that loss that she's just meant to swallow. Like just go on blind belief because she wasn't there. She's kind of taking in the narrative, right? That the military is giving her, that the press is giving her, that her parents are giving her, her professors are giving her, right? And so when she gets to La Maddalena and when she is married to a naval officer and finding herself kind of in that world, I wanted her to have something to compare that to and Lenny and his death gave me that.
There's also a phenomenon that the Navy, recruitment went really well for the Navy during the Việtnam War era because of course there were a lot of guys who were pretty smart and figured out that like they were a lot safer aboard a ship than they would have been in the jungles of Việt Nam And so that was a real issue that the Navy kind of dealt with even years after Việt Nam because their ranks had swelled. And then what do you do with all those guys? And my dad was serving in a time where a lot of the guys that he was working with had come into the Navy in that era. So I was also interested in that.
Amy Clark (21:06)
Yeah, I thought it was such a great launch for her to be able to not only the fact that that happened and she understands a little bit more of the inner workings of what that would be like in a family, but also because, you know, she is thinking she's escaping protests and the things that are happening and then is confronted with the very thing that she escaped from and is now having to have a reckoning with that, which I thought really built a whole other kind of experience that we maybe wouldn't have had had you not given her that as her backstory.
Rachel Beanland (21:46)
Yeah, yeah, totally. And I mean, you know, and I think also I'm, I'm always very concerned with grief and loss and you know, each of my books have kind of dealt with it in some way. I lost my dad young, I was in my twenties and I think, you know, one of the shocks after he died was like, man, I have to just live with this forever. You know, like you kind of think, there's gonna be a before and but then like I'll eventually get back to the way I felt before or, you're just, you can't imagine it right beforehand. And then after you've lost someone really close to you, you realize like, Oh, I'm never going back to the way things were before. And even if I could learn to live without my dad, like I am a different person as a result of having lost him. And I think I've just always been, as a writer, concerned with those ideas.
Amy Clark (22:45)
So your books are all kind of in conversation with each other then.
Rachel Beanland (22:49)
I think that's one of the ways they are. Yeah, I mean, they're all very different and I definitely want to write different books. Like, you know, I don't want to kind of follow a template, but I think that is one thing they share in common.
Amy Clark (22:51)
Yeah. Yeah, well when she gets there, I do love all the newlywed shenanigans that end up unfolding, know, her having to make dinner on a hot plate, that this all these kinds of experiences, even though I'm coming from a different era, I remember a lot of these newlywed moments in my own like marriage. And I wanted to talk a little bit about the beginning stage, what you wanted to show about getting set up as a newlywed bride in this space.
Rachel Beanland (23:30)
Yeah, so I mean, I had a couple of really good sources. And of course, one of those sources makes it into the book. This guide called The Navy Wife, and it was like a how to, I'm, holding it up for you to see. But of course, the listeners won't be able to see it. But what it's called The Navy Wife, what she ought to know about the customs of the service and the management of a Navy household.
And so that was a real Bible for me as I was kind of imagining Eileen getting started. But yeah, she's surrounded by all of these women who really have put their husbands' careers first. And this is something that I witnessed growing up. My mom and all of her friends, none of them worked outside of the home, right? Because they were moving every two years and how can you get a job when you're moving every two years and when your husband deploys constantly and is never around and can't pick up the kids from soccer practice or whatever. It just like gets too complicated.
Obviously now more service members are women and that changes the dynamic completely. But in the era in which I was growing up, it was mainly wives who were kind of the trailing spouse. They were really there to kind of bolster their husbands careers in whatever way they could. And it really wasn't very many years before my mother was kind of a Navy wife that you would see lines about the wife's service and on literally on her husband's fitness report. Like, so I mean, yeah, no, it's crazy. I mean, like, you know, this was like a family affair and the wives that were good at it definitely bolstered their husband's careers.
And I was kind of, when I was writing Eileen, I was definitely thinking about my mother because my mother I would say was not that good at it. Like she was not, she was not that interested, right? There was an expression people would talk about, like, women that wore their husbands' rank on their sleeves, or, know. my mom didn't, but also she didn't wanna join a bunch of stuff, and she didn't wanna, she was a reader, she quilted, she was running four children around, she just kinda couldn't be bothered with some of it. So she was also in my head as well.
But yeah, the Navy, I mean, it was really fun to write Eileen and these wives. I mean, the women are all over the place. They're coming from different places in America and different perspectives. And they've all had their own kind of unique experiences with the military. And one of the challenges for Eileen is that her husband, Paul, is a real rule follower. You know, he is like duty bound, you know, rah rah, like, and so that presents its own challenges. Cause there are other women who are married to guys who are willing to kind of walk the line a little bit more.
Amy Clark (26:42)
Yeah. Yeah, no, I loved it. You know, I, I got married really young and my husband and I basically I married him and then we moved to Massachusetts and we packed everything after we got married, on our honeymoon packed our entire everything we owned and we like cross country to over to Massachusetts. And I mean, I remember all of these moments where it was like burning everything and it turned out that my oven was running really hot. And you know, we had a folding table and chairs and a futon for probably the first year we were married and that's all the furniture we had.
And so I just think about these moments and I was just really transported even though I don't have the experience of being a military wife. think anyone who's ever maybe strived or had a hard time when they first got married will really appreciate all the ways that she had to get to know like this town and become acclimated to it and be brave enough to do things like I'm gonna take Italian lessons, I'll learn how to speak the language and be part of the people and adapt and it was like getting to go on little adventures with her and it just reminded me of that time of just being thrown into a new stage of my life.
Rachel Beanland (27:57)
Yeah, I think that, I mean, I've definitely always been fascinated by early marriages. I had one as well. Like, I mean, I'm still in it 23 years later. And so, you know, it's like, I can look back with hindsight and say like, that all worked out. Like, that was great. But I can totally, I can totally look back and see how it easily could have not worked out, you know?
Amy Clark (28:04)
Yeah, same, I know, we're one of the few. Absolutely, 10,000%.
Rachel Beanland (28:23)
And I remember like a time shortly after my husband and I were married, I realized he wasn't unloading the dishwasher like ever. And I was like, you know, when this thing is like, when the light goes on and it's done, either of us can unload it. And like, and now he unloads it constantly. Like he figured it out, you But like, you know, it's just those early day things where you're like, you who, you know, but we were 22.
And partly, like some stuff I didn't stand up enough because I didn't, I'd never even thought about it before. You know, it was like, I was so new to like being alive, you know, and certainly to being an adult. And, and so I'm very interested in how, when you decide to marry young, I mean, one of the things you're kind of committing to is the fact that like, hey, you and I are going to grow up together, like we're gonna grow into the people we're gonna become and we're gonna try and do that side by side. But like, we're not at 22, you are not done. Like, you're not cooked, you know? So it just like, yeah, it feels sillier and sillier, though, the older I get, like, oh my God, what were we thinking? But it worked. But then I was also very interested, like my dad had a marriage that before he married my mom that did not work.
But also it always shocked me like how little he talked about it. Like how it was just like a thing that happened. And then he moved on and he married my mom and he had four kids and like, you know, so it's like, I also thought, huh, how fascinating that you can commit yourself to someone and think it's going to be forever. And then realize like, holy, crap, I made a mistake. And then it's kind of like, whoops. Do over, let's try again, you know? And that worked too. So, I just, I am very interested by early marriages, yeah.
Amy Clark (30:24)
Same, same. So we were really young when we got married, but I married my high school sweetheart, so we've been together since he was 15. He didn't even have a driver's license. So we've been together that long. And you think about how you evolve as people. And we always say, like, it is totally a lottery moment. No one should ever do this. Like, I don't know why it worked. It just did. But as we evolved into two completely different people, we still liked each other. In fact, we liked each other more. It's like, what?
Rachel Beanland (30:33)
Right, that's what you're banking on.
Amy Clark (30:52)
We're looking at our kids who are in their 20s and we're like, please don't do this. Like this was, this was actually a very foolhardy mission that we were on, but we're grateful like it worked out, but don't, don't do this. Like don't replicate this. We have no idea why it worked and we're really glad, but we also can totally celebrate when our friends get divorced and we're like, yeah, that didn't work for you. We're glad you can find someone else now.
Rachel Beanland (31:14)
Right. Yeah, yeah. No, I think it's really fascinating. I mean, my dad, I guess he told me when I was really young that he had been previously married. And then he thought I remembered it. But of course, I didn't because he told me when I was like four or something. And like, he thought he was doing the right thing, like the parenting books or you know, whatever. He's like, Okay, I'll tell her when she's young. And then he never mentioned it again.
So then I'm fast forward, I'm 14 and he's driving me to work in West Ryslip, England. He like randomly we drive past like a sign that says welcome to West Ryslip or whatever. And he goes, oh, my first wife was born here. And I was like, what? Hold the phone. Like, you were married before? I was so shocked.
Amy Clark (31:55)
You're like, what? Oh my gosh.
Rachel Beanland (32:04)
But he just didn't realize it hadn't sunk in the first time. Yeah, so I've always thought about like, man, what if that had been different? I wouldn't be here, so.
Amy Clark (32:11)
Yeah. Well, I mean, when you think about it too, Eileen, like she doesn't know what she likes. She doesn't know who she is on her own. And so a big component of this, like I would acquaint this like for readers. I'm like, it kind of reminded me of a Judy Blume experience, like an awakening. And I don't often get to see that in a young newlywed. So I want to talk about that component. I mean, this is a very sexy book and I loved it.
Rachel Beanland (32:40)
Yeah, definitely my sexiest to date.
Amy Clark (32:42)
Okay, it is your sexiest. That's what I feel like. I like, I'm like, my gosh, Rachel, this is quite juicy. So let's talk about that. Did that take a lot of bravery for you as a writer to formulate that or you were comfortable? Okay.
Rachel Beanland (32:49)
Yeah, yeah, there's some juicy scenes. Yeah. The sex scenes are pretty hard to write. Yeah, I mean, because I definitely was reading them with like, a reader sitting on my shoulder, you know, I was writing them with a reader on my shoulder thinking like, woo am I going too far here?
Or, you know, and I've been, I'm picturing my editor and what she's gonna say and I'm picturing my agent who's a guy so like I mean, he's great, Chad Luibl is his name, he's amazing. But like, I'm picturing like Chad and I are gonna have conversations about these sex scenes and whether they're working or not working or whatever. I was just like, oh, the whole thing is so embarrassing.
But I did feel like sex is an important part of getting married. And it's a certainly, it's a big part if you have an early marriage and you get married when you don't know what the hell is going on, you know, and you haven't learned everything you need to learn, right? Then you're gonna do some of that learning while you're married. And so I felt like we absolutely needed to follow her through, follow Eileen through like a sexual awakening, you know? That means writing about sex.
But you know, mean, Florence Adler Swims Forever was written in the middle of this, you know, it's like, so much grief and family's lost a daughter and it's like not the right time for a bunch of scenes. I think there's one and it's very PG. And then of course, The House is on Fire is written after a theater fire and everyone's just trying to stay alive. But yeah, so this was one where because the story took place over two years and was following this couple, we do wind up with some sex scenes that get in there.
Amy Clark (34:13)
Yeah, no, it wa, it was a wonderful surprise actually. I didn't know that I was going to get that. I'm like, I feel smarter because I learned all this historical fiction. And also like I got to do something fun and like something steamy that I want to read. And I think the packaging of that is wonderful because we're getting both kinds of experiences in one book.
Rachel Beanland (34:41)
Well, I hope everyone else thinks so. That's lovely.
Amy Clark (34:56)
Well, obviously there is a tension that's residing in the story with the naval presence there and the locals and all of that was so compelling. That thread itself was such a great unboxing and I wanted to talk about what drew you to explore both the environmental and political resistance that was happening on the island at this time.
Rachel Beanland (35:20)
Yeah, so, you know, going back to 2019 when I was on the island and I'm thinking, this is good, there's something here. You know, I was like, this is a good setting to set a novel. When I left and I started working on The House is on Fire, I, around that time, started a folder, you know, on Dropbox or whatever, with just kind of articles and little things I would read every now and then about La Maddalena.
And, that was kind of when The House is on Fire was not going well or when I like really didn't want to do my pages for the day, I would Google La Maddalena or you know, I would read like a little article about something to do with La Maddalena and just kind of plotting, okay, what if that's my third book? as soon as I started really reading about La Maddalena's history and particularly its recent history and the American presence on the island. It didn't take long to figure out that the 70s were indeed a very tumultuous time. The Americans kind of showed up. Most people on the island had no idea they were coming. They had formed an agreement with, you know, the federal government. But remember, Italy, like only kind of unified in the 1800s. So like, there are these regions, Sardinia being one of them, that really in many ways that act pretty autonomously and then it's like sometimes a reminder to, know, like the Sardinian people are like, oh yeah, we're part of Italy.
And certainly in the seventies, this would have been more of the case, right? So all of a sudden you get all these Americans showing up. was, you know, a submarine tender that's gonna be moored, you know, off the coast of this little island. The Sardinians were like, well, wait a second. We never said this was okay, you know? And then, you know, if they complained about it, they were just told like this was decided over your heads and like, don't worry about it. So that right away caused unrest.
And then the fact, if you've got a submarine tender, I mean, a submarine tender is literally a ship that tends to submarines, right? Repairs them, resupplies them. Then if you've got a submarine tender, that means you also have a bunch of nuclear submarines that are coming and going.
And I mean, this little archipelago is like, just picture, I mean, it is crystal clear blue water, you know, little kind islands and islets. And I mean, it is out of like a fairy tale. It's stunning. And so, you know, a nuclear submarine is like the opposite of all that, right? There was just so much that the islanders didn't know. And then there were a lot of groups outside of the island, more kind of politically informed groups that were really taking up the mantle and saying like, wait a second, this should not be happening. It shouldn't be happening in Sardinia. And, you know, Sardinia should kind of get to decide their own fate.
So, as I'm reading about all of this, and then also I'm reading about just the 1970s in Italy in general, and all of the political strife and the years of lead, and, you know, there's so much going on. I started to realize that my own childhood had been a lot more complicated than I realized because I was sitting here thinking, I spent two idyllic years in Italy in the eighties. You know, and when I started to learn, I think a real, a really important moment for me was when I realized that one of the big reasons that the Americans were there was not necessarily because we had to tend to submarines in this particular location in the Mediterranean, but because we were worried about Sardinia going red, going communist. And so the idea was like, put as many Americans and as many bases and as many, you know, like increase our presence as much as we can to try to head this off. And
So really, you know, having military officers and their families and enlisted, you know, like having everybody there was a way to say, ain't democracy grand? And I just kind of, I, when I understood that that was part of my story, I thought, my God, this is so rich. And, know, like I have to do something with it.
Amy Clark (39:26)
Hmm. Yeah, and it's like a pocket of history that most people would never know about. And the way that you present it, it really, I love that our main character, she is having this awakening not only to that, but I think one aspect of the story that is so important is about American exceptionalism, right? And our rules in different environments. I think that's something that a lot of us are just reckoning with now, looking back on different times in our childhood or the ways that things were presented in a history class, we're now having this awakening and it was really like making me think about a lot of different aspects of those kinds of moments in my life too that I think would be really exceptional for book clubs to talk about.
Rachel Beanland (40:26)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, it's funny. Every novel I write, I feel like I'm also writing a contemporary story because there were so many connections as I was writing The House is on Fire to what was happening in 2020. you know, and then I was writing this and, you know, we've got so much happening politically and really like the way that America is positioning itself internationally right now is very reminiscent in many ways of what we were doing in the 70s and in the 60s. So absolutely, I mean, I think it would be hard to read this and not think about the modern day.
Amy Clark (41:07)
Well, if you could like formulate the best book club conversation, what do you want book clubs to be talking about from this book? What would you like to see them discussing?
Rachel Beanland (41:16)
About the book? I don't care what they're talking about. Oh gosh, I mean honestly as long as they're excited and talking about the book, I don't care what they are talking about.
I suspect that they'll be talking a lot about the love triangle. There is a love triangle. I don't want to give too much away. Of course that means there is some infidelity and that's kind of part and parcel of this particular story and this particular young woman getting married young and not knowing everything she needed to know. But I also think, you know, I hope that they spend some time talking about like the environmental implications of, you know, military expansionism and, you know, nuclear warfare. the fact that we have been actually talking about the detonation of nuclear weapons recently. And I mean, I thought those conversations had all been put to bed. Like, it is a bad idea to drop a nuclear weapon of any kind.
Forget about individual countries even, just talk about the impact on all of humanity. I mean, you know, when I'm writing about this story, you know, the environmental research that goes into figuring out if these nuclear submarines are indeed like leaching, you know, chemicals into the environment. It's like trying to parse out, well, what is coming from the subs and what is coming from fallout from all of the nuclear testing that had happened in the previous decades, right?
And what's happening from other nuclear spills and other nuclear, and it's like, my God, this is all manmade and like, we could just not be doing it, right? So at the risk of sounding like a peacenik like whatever, this is real. Yeah.
Amy Clark (42:42)
Yeah. And I want to note that this is April 20, because every time I do one of these conversations, it'll be something, you know, months later and we're like, I just want to reflect that this is the moment what we are going through right now is the talk of nuclear war on April 20.
Rachel Beanland (43:16)
Yes, yes, like hopefully by July nobody's talking about it.
Amy Clark (43:19)
But we never know because I have had historical fiction writers on and we're talking about these eerie parallels and I'm like, my gosh, this is kind of frightening because it's actually happening. And so I always like to like, no, like, here's a timestamp for you all.
Rachel Beanland (43:31)
Yeah.
Amy Clark (43:36)
Well, Rachel, as we close out here on the main show, I just want to let our listeners know that we are going to be talking about the back half of this book. If you're a patron of the show, that's what keeps us commercial free. It gives space writers to come and tell their story. It's $5 a month, or you can prepay for a 10% savings. And that keeps us here independent.
But we always end our show the same way, which is just what are you feeling proud of, whether it's with this book itself or with your writing career in general or anything else that's going on in your life. And it gives me a chance to say thank you so much for coming here. I could not wait to talk about this story. I love this book so much. I could not believe that I finished this in like a day because it's like a big chunker. I could not put it down. I could not put the story down. I love what you're teaching us about American history, but also just a fun beach read that was so needed in my life. So thank you for that. But I would love to hear what you're feeling proud of now.
Rachel Beanland (44:36)
Oh gosh, I mean, I'm feeling proud it's done. I mean, you know, every book, like getting it to the finish line. And I mean, this one, was really, I was making edits on like the fourth pass. They were like, Rachel, here's the PDF of the final book. Don't change anything. And I'm like, hold on, could you just change this one thing? So.
Amy Clark (44:46)
Chad was fine with it, like you going in on the fourth pass?
Rachel Beanland (44:58)
No one was fine with it. Nobody was fine with it. Like, I think, you know, but they have humored me, so that is nice. But yeah, so I am just very happy that it's done and I can think about what's next. And I'm excited to, you know, go out on tour and talk to readers about the book, because of course, whenever it's lived in your head for this long, and, you know, it's really nice to just see it in other people's hands and see how they're experiencing it.
Amy Clark (45:23)
Well, I'm very excited for you to get to go on a book tour and so thrilled that we got to share space with you today. Listeners, I will meet you guys on the other side.
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